


Personhood

by localfreak



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 20:29:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3354260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/localfreak/pseuds/localfreak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natalia is not a girl. She is a weapon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Personhood

**Author's Note:**

> Additional notes: It has come to my attention some of my fic has been uploaded to a website I do not trust. I would like to make it abundantly clear I do not give permission for my work to be shared on any other website (linking to my fic's URL is fine), or uploaded anywhere without my knowledge and expressed permission. Quite frankly, if I want to upload it somewhere I'll do it myself.

Natalia isn’t like the others. 

She has always known this. The others when they arrive sometimes scream in the night or cry into their pillows whispering about their parents and friends left behind.  
They usually stop after a month- or else they disappear. 

It isn’t that Natalia is better than them. She is different. They are children who will become weapons; Natalia was born a weapon.  
Natalia goes on missions sometimes, dressed up like a child. She learns to pretend to be one, to smile or blush if someone chucks her ‘neath the chin or says what a good little girl she is. 

Weapons are neither good nor bad; they are merely functional or discarded.

Natalia is not a girl. She is a weapon.

She is fourteen years old (as near as she can work out) when they start freezing her. After that, time passes in new ways. She is simply sent out when needed and returns quickly. They don’t freeze her often, for which she is relieved, because she needs to be able to move across the world, blending in seamlessly, and every time she is frozen the world seems to have changed too much when she wakes up. It takes her time then to learn the social cues, the common knowledge and current affairs she will be expected to converse about.

Natalia is approximately twenty five when she sees the photograph. It has fallen out of one of the files- a distance shot of a comrade.

He has long hair and a silver arm.

Natalia realises that he is her father. That was born, not factory-made.

That she was born a child and forged into a weapon.

She cannot find his name, cannot ask without arousing suspicion.

She thinks of him, secretly, in between assignments. 

Natalia thinks about how things might have been, if she had been raised by him outside of the red room. She wonders if she would’ve been a good little girl.

Some years and many deaths later, Natalia is given a chance – a choice- to be a person instead of a weapon. 

She takes it.


End file.
